Researcher Education and Development Scholarship Conference

Dr Hang Li, Research Associate, Dr Lucy Atkinson, Research Fellow, Dr Karen Clegg, Reader, Dr Liz Quinlan, Research Associate. All authors are affiliated to University of York, UK.

Doctoral supervision increasingly extends beyond the Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). Alongside academic supervisors, industry-based supervisors play an important role in supporting doctoral researcher development. Such joint supervisory arrangements, often associated with HEI-Industry collaborative doctoral programmes (Lee, 2018), are understood to broaden doctoral education by offering a dual learning context (Compagnucci and Spigarelli, 2025).

Existing research highlights generally positive experiences for both academic supervisors and doctoral researchers in HEI-Industry joint supervision. Academic supervisors highlighted greater access to industry sites, data, and long-term partnership opportunities (Malfroy, 2011), while also noting challenges in increased workload and supervisory misalignment (Fillery-Travis et al., 2017; Harman, 2004). Doctoral researchers articulated wider professional development and support (Morris et al, 2012), but they also raised concerns about industry supervisors’ availability and engagement (Tavares et al., 2020).

As a part of the HEI-industry supervision team, industry supervisors’ perspectives remain underexplored and underrepresented. We know very little about industry supervisors’ experiences and what development opportunities they need for their supervisory role.

This gap is explored by the focus groups conducted as part of the Next Generation SuperVision Project (RSVP) – a four-year project funded by Research England. A total of forty-three industry supervisors from STEM, Arts, Heritage, and Clinical/Medical sectors participated in the discussion.

In this blog post, we draw on the perspectives of these industry supervisors to explore their role in the supervisory partnerships, where tensions arise in supervision, and their expectations for supervisory development opportunities. The forthcoming RSVP focus group report will expand on the focus group discussions and implications for supervisory development.

Negotiating partnership within the joint supervisory team

In focus group, industry supervisors described their role in team supervision, two key themes emerged: 

Connecting academia and industry, industry supervisors explained how they:

• align project objectives with industry objectives and priorities,
• support the translation of research into applied contexts, and
• facilitate doctoral researchers’ and academic supervisors’ access to industry resources and materials.

Broadening doctoral researchers’ experience, industry supervisors described their practices to:

• facilitate doctoral researchers’ exposure to industrial practices
• support doctoral researchers’ external professional networking, and
• advise doctoral researchers’ career development.

In these ways, industry supervisors considered their supervisory role to go beyond delivery of research projects, to supporting doctoral researchers’ broader professional development, to be ‘industry-ready at the end of their project’. 

However, industry supervisors emphasised that although the HEI-industry supervision is formally defined as joint, their supervisory involvement in practice was highly dependent on specific contexts (e.g. funding sources). Despite this, they consistently expressed a strong aspiration to be an ‘equal partner’ on the supervisory team, with shared responsibility for supporting the development of doctoral researchers and meaningful involvement in shaping the impact of the research project.

Where tensions surface: misalignment between two institutional worlds 

Industry supervisors’ discussions highlighted misalignment between academic and industrial expectations as the central source of tension within the joint supervisory partnership. As academic and industry supervisors bring distinct institutional cultures and practices, tensions often emerge in expectations for the research priorities and progression. Maintaining expectations for the industrial value of the research is an important aspect of industry supervisors’ role, while their academic partner’s priorities may focus more strongly on discovery-driven research or publication outputs. As a result, differences surfaced in practical aspects of supervision, such as the recruitment of doctoral candidates, decisions about the progression of the research, and expectations regarding publication timing, format, and extent of research outputs that could be made public.

At the same time, industry supervisors highlighted some examples of successful supervisory partnerships. These were often described as relationships built upon a shared understanding of each other’s contexts, expectations, and ‘unique challenges’. Such mutual understanding, developed through sustained collaboration and communication, was seen as essential for maintaining an effective supervisory partnership.

Expectations for supervisory development

Industry supervisors reflected on the skills they brought to the supervisory team and identified areas for development that they considered necessary for effective supervision. Many drew confidence from their own doctoral experiences; and frequently mentioned skills acquired from their professional roles, such as communication, project management, and leadership skills. These experiences were seen to provide a foundation for industry supervisors’ engagement in supervision.

While benefiting from the managerial training within their organisations, industry supervisors expressed a need for supervision-specific development opportunities that could provide greater insight into the doctoral lifecycle, including key milestones, academic expectations, and doctoral researchers’ broader commitments in the academic setting. Some also emphasised the value of development opportunities with a pedagogical focus, such as understanding how doctoral researchers learn and supervisory communication. They also saw particular value in joint training sessions involving both academic and industry supervisors – “to get more of a perspective from the academic side about how it would maybe all pan out”, as these shared spaces could help build a clearer mutual understanding of roles, strengths, and expectations across sectors.

Towards more effective HEI-Industry joint supervision

The RSVP focus group with industry supervisors offered a closer look at the HEI-industry joint supervision. Industry supervisor described actively engaging with doctoral researchers’ development and expressed a strong aspiration for equal partnership within joint supervisory teams. Their voices also suggest that effective academic-industry supervisory collaboration often depends on sustained communication and the development of a shared understanding of each other’s contexts, expectations, and challenges. These reflections point to the importance of supervisory development opportunities that support such mutual understanding. Supervision-focused professional development, particularly peer exchange opportunities that bring academic and industry supervisors together, may help clarify expectations, strengthen communication, and support more coherent collaboration within HEI-Industry joint supervisory teams, towards an effective supervisory partnership for doctoral researcher development.

AI note: Image is generated by Canva AI, created from the prompt ‘Create an image of academia-industry collaboration, using the concept of bridging two institutional worlds’